Presidential candidate Rick Santorum said today he wouldn’t be dropping out of the race for the Republican nomination until Mitt Romney had locked up the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the nomination. “There’s one thing worse than … a convention fight and that’s picking the wrong candidate, not picking the best candidate to give us the best chance to win,” Santorum stated this morning no NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Santorum pointed out that Romney stayed in the race until John McCain had secured over 700 delegates.

“It’s not the longest of long shots,” said Santorum. "So many of the delegates who are coming to the convention are unbound delegates … Only one time in the last almost 120 years has a Republican defeated a Democratic incumbent for president. One time. Almost every single time the establishment said, ‘Let’s run a moderate, we have to win by appealing to moderates because we have to get this horrible president out.'” That one exception was Ronald Reagan, Santorum pointed out.

But Santorum is facing an uphill battle, with even many solid conservatives uniting behind Romney in order to end the primary fight early and move on to general election campaigning. There is virtually no chance Santorum will win the nomination, but his remaining in the race could certainly pose a complication for a Romney campaign looking to wipe the slate clean to run against Barack Obama.